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Saturday, December 29, 2012

The GMK had been sitting around in a folder on my desktop. Before, I was planning on having Twee make the music... but it ended up that he never got the time, so today I went on newgrounds and found a track that seemed fitting.

Saturday, December 22, 2012

Today I made an HTML5 game called "Comic Sans Adventure" for the 4 hour game dev thing(it was hosted today). I spent 1 hour on the game and you can play it right in your browser here. It's a point and click ending finding game.
If you have any comments you can either reply to this blog post, or on the GMC topic here.

Saturday, December 15, 2012

Today I opened up the source file for Maximus Cerebrum (that WIP I temporarily stopped working on). The game has a good 20 minutes or so worth of gameplay... maybe even a half hour. Anyway, I've decided that I'm going to try to finish the game soon. The last version that I released to the public is very outdated compared with what I have now, anyway. I may be completely overhauling certain parts of the story... but the basic premise will remain the same. "You are a robot in a robot generation factory."
The final game will probably end up being about 40 minutes long... I'd like to get the game finished quickly, so that I can focus on my newest project: The Sound Of Murder.

Thursday, December 13, 2012

Today I compiled (I think) all of the shaky avatars I've made and put them together into one big gif!

TerraFriedSheep (previously known as Soulsnatcher) had an avatar that was 48 X 48, so it doesn't fit in that well with the others. Anyway, it's here... the result of my boredom.

Going from left to right, their usernames are: TheSnidr, Icymx, lemon405, orange08(me), TerraFriedSheep, True Valhalla, Sir, Davve, and RoyTheShort.
I think I did ThatSnail's avatar, too... but as I recall, I didn't go by proper drawing procedures on that one... maybe I'll try again sometime in the future.

Friday, November 23, 2012

I've decided to tell the story of my history in the world of making games...

It all began that fateful day when I saw my brother on his computer... I saw him editing a level on the platform tutorial for Game Maker. He was actually able to make changes to the game... which was fascinatingly new to me at the time. How old was I? I don't know... I'm thinking some time between age 8 and age 11 maybe? I've been using Game Maker for at least 4 years now, anyway. The first year or so I wasn't that into it. Then I started learning and getting very in-depth.

The Platform Game Maker Tutorial

My first games... oh how I wish I still had them. One of them was my sisters face going around eating carrots... one of them was this weird dude who would search for the exits to the levels whilst dodging birds that pooped and dinosaurs that... stood still? I tried to duplicate Chip's Challenge in different ways several times. I've definitely come a long way since then. I remember my first "big" project.

"The Last Jengoran" was my first "big" project. It was pretty decent. It had a good movement engine, some okay weapons, some nicely designed levels. The graphics were rather meshed however... some were slightly out of place. It was still pretty fun, though. The final boss is surprisingly good for how much of a novice I was back then.

Not long after I made "The Last Jengoran" I decided to make another "big" project. "Super-Cyborg"... I remember I became inspired to make it after I saw some screenshots of Exterminator by Chad Chisholm(this was long before Exterminator was released). In my mind it was Halo, Iji, and Exterminator put into a blender. I remember I took a 3 month break from the game, but eventually finished it anyway. It was a platform shooter about a cyborg... the cyborg was supposed to fight against the "globs"(green blobs xD) that were coming out of the earth. Additionally there were "Mocodins", the equivalent of the Covenant on halo... except in my game they ended up being the good guys. The Mocodins were accused of letting the globs loose from the inside of the earth... eventually, after you battle your way through the game, killing globs and mocodins, you find out you're actually a human that was a victim of brain control treatments. It turns out the government is planning to control the minds of all humans on the earth. Naturally you want to stop it... so you kill some scientists and guards and stuff. And you blow up this mind control facility, which destroys your robot suit. In the end you join up with the Mocodins, the Mocodins use their ship to destroy a desert which contains all of the mind control grains that were going to be used. The End! Boring, cliche, and dumb. There were some pretty sweet boss fights in the game, though. Also a crowbar weapon that was hidden. And a boss who attacks you with his crowbar... and a ninja Mocodin! It was pretty epic stuff even though it was very poorly made.

Eventually I realized how crappy "Super-Cyborg" was. But by then, some genius decided to put it in the GMC Cage Match(An event that used to happen every week or so on the GMC where people vote between 2 GM games for which one is the best). Super-Cyborg was put up against Adrenaline(epic multiplayer top down shooter). Obviously, Adrenaline won by a landslide. I got several "pity votes" as makerofthegames called them, though.

Sometime after all this, I got on the Zerosoft forums. Zerosoft was started by this cool guy named Jess Horton. I met a couple of really cool guys on Zerosoft, including Jess. ThatSnail, Flankattack, Fuzion Creative, Bugaham Games, Desert Dweller, TD Games, Andrew Brophy, Chainsawkitten... there were definitely some others, but those are the main ones I remember.

Jess, shortly after I joined, hosted a retro game competition on Zerosoft. Each sprite in the game could only have 4 colors(the transparent color didn't count). I had fun making a game called Unicycle. It wasn't epic or anything. But it was still a pretty nice adventure. After I took it down from YYG(I felt it was too terrible) I got a random PM from someone who wanted me to upload it again so they could let their 2 young cousins play it(how random is that?).

Unicycle didn't place in the top 3. It did place in the top 5, though... and Jess was feeling generous, so I ended up getting $20 (along with the others in the top 5) in prize money. I gave the money to Flankattack since I was too young to have a paypal account and since he had beta tested the game for me and given some really helpful advice for it before I released it.

Jess had to close down Zerosoft due to being busy or something... which is how GameCog got started. GameCog eventually died too, anyway... but the basic site is still there.

I made some more games after all this... Apple Tree, a game where you shot apples off a tree at people passing by. You had to be careful to make sure to get the guy with the chainsaw. Apple Tree was actually featured on Yoyogames, for at least 3 hours, before I informed NessXX(ex-Yoyogames moderator) that my game was too crappy for such a high honor.

Later I made a game called Jumper Men which was very decent. It was a platform arcade game in which you could double jump. There was a 2 player mode... lots of nice features. Tons of enemies. A mostly consistent graphical style. These days when I play it, I'm somewhat disgusted, but people still like the game. Andrew Brophy featured it on his "Wow You Lose" game reviewing website(which is now dead)... and some dude from YYG uploaded a video of himself beating all the bosses in the boss mode. If you crouch for long enough, green vapors will begin coming out of the place where the player's behind would be if he had one. Enemies can actually be killed by it, but you don't get any points that way.

After all this I felt competent enough to make a Chip's Challenge clone. I had much difficulty with the force floors and ice and pushable blocks... but I actually managed to do it... which is incredible... The game will remain forever unfinished with 25 levels.

After I abanonded TTT(Tim's Titanic Test), I started working on another project which was destined to be abandoned. Super Jumper Man was a spinoff of Jumper Men where you could also double jump. Lots of enemies would come, gradually it would get more difficult with more and more enemies. Originally I was thinking the game would be playable on a PSP or something since Yoyogames was headed in that direction with their 5th and 6th competitions. I got a nice combo system where you keep getting more points as long as you don't touch the ground.

Bonk!

Sometime around there the GMC Jam got started up by Shelby (back then he was called Theophilus, though). The first jam theme was "Pancakes" (due to popular vote). I chose to wait out the first jam. The theme was very unappealing to me, needless to say.

On the 2nd GMC Jam, I'm pretty sure I made a game called Ocean Insane... which got 5th place... not too shabby. It was a platform view game about a guy with limited oxygen time in the depths of the ocean. Each underwater level was procedurally generated... which was pretty sweet... lots of fish and stuff. A big fish was the final boss. Since the theme was "insanity" I naturally had to have some sort of tie in. So in the end It's said that the dude managed to get out of the ocean in time, onto an island... where he went insane from boredom or something.

On the 3rd GMC Jam, with the theme "live" I think what I made was "The Statues Live" and also a second entry "Rocket Leaper". The Statues Live, which was a platform view puzzle game where you could swap between controlling 2 characters, got 2nd place. Rocket Leaper, a platform view game where you could freeze rockets and then use them as platforms to get higher to escape from rising electricity... wasn't so fortunate... but was destined to later glory.

Later on I began remaking Rocket Leaper from scratch. I got some testers who helped incredibly. ThatSnail, Robert3DG, Andy, DarkMatter, Twee (also known as Fyaopo). The release of Rocket Leaper would have been like 4 months sooner if the composer Dean Harris didn't take so long to make the music xD. It was worth it, though. The track is freakin incredible. I consider the game to be one of my greatest creations, now. Which, I guess, doesn't mean too much.

On GameJolt things were pretty active... I uploaded a WIP there... A platform Ninja game-thing that was massively inspired by Assassin Blue. It was freakin epic. 3 Sword combo and I have no FREAKIN CLUE how I made the slash animation looks so nice(way better than everything else looks)... so sad it ended up being abandoned... I'm such a lazy slob.

Zack Banack started a thing called Jolt Kombat on GameJolt shortly after all this. I got in on it up against this dude named Electron... we were supposed to bash eachother in our games which we would make over a month-long period. Believe me, I bashed him. I bashed him hard... maybe not quite as hard as I should have, though. My game was called "Fruity Adventure"(I was informed later that Fruity means "gay"). Since Electron was a smelly loser he didn't finish his game on time (he didn't finish it later, either) and I won "by default".

Later on GameJolt one of their most beloved moderators was leaving, a guy named KniteBlargh. They hosted a competition in his honor where you were supposed to make a game somehow related to him. I won "by default" with Sun Restoration. A (you guessed it!) platform view game where you control a knight on a horse who will collect all the scattered pieces of the sun to restore light to the earth.

I soon began delving into making RPG text (text that shows up adding one letter at a time), on one day I thought I had made the perfect text engine(which I hadn't, really). So I made Saga Of The Ugly to celebrate. Everything was made on the spot, so I didn't really know what I had made until it was finished. It ended up being a platform view game about an "ugly" who encounters mean people in the world... there are 5 different endings for the game.

It wasn't that long until I noticed a competition on 64Digits called "Scary 4 Digits". I got the idea of making a sequel to Saga Of The Ugly with more of an emphasis on darkness and horror. It ended up that I collaborated with Bret Hudson on the game... I couldn't have done it without him. The game turned out very nicely. Even though it didn't place in the competition, it still got a lot of attention and I consider it as being one of my best creations thus far.

On some of the later GMC Jams (which have happened quite recently), I made "Water, water, water"(which I think got 5th place), "Sleepshooter"(which got 3rd place), and "Morph Worlds"(which got 2nd place).

Water, water, water was a "video interactive entertainment" game as raocow described it in his LP.
Sleepshooter was a platform puzzle game with some nice smooth visuals and epic music by Twee (aka Fyaopo). Morph Worlds was an Isometric puzzle game.

Undoubtedly I've left some of my minor little games and stuff out... I've definitely mixed up the order of some of this stuff... But this post will serve the basic purpose to tell a lot of my history.

TL;DR. I used game maker to make some crappy games and now I'm making some not-quite crappy games.

Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Today, we celebrate the birth of a legendary independent game designer. This mollusk has given his all in the line of duty for the cause of the indie game movement. Whether by giving expert programming advice or simply giving support and words of encouragement, this shelled creature has earned his high rank in our world.

Wednesday, October 31, 2012

As some of you know, I collaborated with 11clock to make a game for the 8th GMC Jam. We named the game "Desperate". While not, by any means, a masterpiece, I was glad we were able to release at least something. I've only collaborated once before, for the Scary 4 Digits competition over at 64Digits, with Bret Hudson. It wasn't so bad since we had a whole month to make our game... but when you only have 72 hours, things are a lot different.

After we released a finished version of Desperate onto the GMC, I decided to make a quick project using the precious remaining jam hours. I ended up using less than 3 hours to make a thing I called buk. Basically, it's a short book with (ms paint) illustrations instead of words. The only thing you can do in buk is turn the pages, listen to the old music, and enjoy the scribbled illustrations that look like they were drawn by the very early stages of a fetus.

All in all, the 8th GMC Jam was very successful. There were 60+ entries.

Monday, October 22, 2012

The 8th GMC Jam is taking place on October 26. In just 4 days! Click here for the GMC Topic which contains further details.
On the last jam I went solo, creating a game called Morph Worlds. It nabbed 2nd place, meaning that I got to pick the special restriction for the next jam(the one that's about to start now)! GameDevDan, who got 1st place, has picked the actual theme.
I plan to collaborate with a fellow GMC Member 11clock this time around. I'll be doing the graphics and he'll probably be doing most of the coding.

Thursday, October 18, 2012

GameDevDan, a fellow GMC member and game designer has just posted a video review for Morph Worlds! An isometric game I made in 72 hours for the 7th GMC Jam. He's been doing video reviews for all the jam games on this topic here. Kudos to him!

Here is the video, he didn't complete the game but still recorded a good chunk of it:

Saturday, October 13, 2012

So, anyway I guess I was browsing through featured games on the Yoyogames sandbox and I found this old game called Muon. It was released in 2007, which doesn't mean it's a bad game or anything, I decided to try it out because I liked how simplistic it looked from the screenshots... I was not disappointed.

The game is a traditional platformer in which you can double jump, the goal in each level is to collect all the yellow rectangle things and then the exit will start working so you can go to the next level. In addition to this, each level is procedurally generated!
On each level you will start out with 3 yellow circles rotating around the player. Whenever you collect a yellow rectangle, another yellow circle begins rotating around you. This is not a meaningless graphical detail, those rotating circles actually represent powers, powers you can use by pressing the down arrow key. If you are in midair and you've already used your double-jump, you may need to jump a bit higher, so you can use this power to jump higher. Likewise, if you are on a block, you can use it to destroy the block(this is useful if there are ever any yellow rectangles that are surrounded by blocks). These powers are not infinite, use your circles carefully! :P

After you beat the 10th and final level you are given your score, which is based on how quickly you beat the game. It would be nice if there were online highscores, but the manual way will have to suffice. I went as fast as I could and managed to get 150350.

Overall, I'd say Muon is a refreshingly simple & fun game, that is slightly repetitive due to not having more than a few different objects. Adding some keys & doors, some monsters, etc. would be very beneficial(but that is not likely to happen). It's still a fun game, however, and I highly recommend you try it out!

Friday, October 5, 2012

Anyway, not much news... I finished another html5 game that is somewhat Halloween themed, I'm beginning to really enjoy using Gimp to draw graphics. I hated Gimp at first but once I got used to the interface it was smooth sailing (mostly) from there.

I just got on Twitter! So, now you can follow me there, and I may even follow you back!

Check out my victory post on the GMC, where I announce my triumph in the online highscores of Rocket Leaper! For months now, Soulsnatcher(aka TerraFriedSheep) had been in 1st place, laughing at me, I could almost hear him mocking me every time I tried to beat it. Well, guess who's laughing now? That's right, the orange you've all come to know and despise love!

Monday, July 30, 2012

The purpose of the GMC Jam is to be creative, to experiment, and most importantly have fun. This jam I realized I should try to experiment with dimensions other than platform view, thus I have created an Isometric game.

Sunday, July 15, 2012

The official GMC Jam #7 topic has been posted! Looking forward to this one, I hope the theme will be as decent as last time. There's also going to be a special restriction. Last time it was "Your game must have one or more achievements separate from the main objective or goal", it wasn't a bad restriction or anything, but this time I'm hoping it will be something that's a bit weirder.

Saturday, July 14, 2012

Lately I have been working on a new game called Ice Cream Dodger. It's a remake of an old WIP that I never finished. It is the first game I have ever made that uses digital graphics instead of pixel-art.

Wheee!

I also uploaded a low quality video to youtube of some of the gameplay. The game is complete except it needs music and sound effects. Dean Harris is going to compose the music, he also made the track used in Rocket Leaper.

Endings Of The Ugly has undergone some beta testing and a few nasty glitches have been fixed. I am still waiting for Twee to finish the music track for the game, however.

I'm going to start working on Maximus Cerebrum as soon as I release Ice Cream Dodger and Endings Of The Ugly.

Thursday, June 28, 2012

So, anyways, It's pretty great except that he only got up to the 19th level and my name isn't orange8, it's orange08. I liked his commentary, anyway. It's interesting to see what kind of impression my game leaves on people.

In other news, Twee has agreed to make a music track for Endings Of The Ugly. So that's pretty swell, I can't wait to release the game!

So anyways, it's finished except I need a music track for it. It is basically the first Saga Of The Ugly remade with bunches of more content and improvements. I've created it within the restrictions of GM:HTML5 so I can quickly port it to be playable in browsers.

In other news, there is a new forum that is called Game Maker Music. It was created by Icmyx to be like the GMC except putting music first instead of games. Pretty neat, I am requesting music for my game, Endings Of The Ugly there.

Does anyone remember that cursor game I posted about a while back? I should really get back to working on that... but there's been a lot of encouragement for Maximus Cerebrum so I'd feel like a lazy slob if I kept working on other projects instead. So basically, my priorities are like this right now:

-Get music for Endings Of The Ugly, finish it.
-Finish Maximus Cerebrum.
-Post a demo for the cursor game.

Friday, May 11, 2012

In the past couple days I've been messing around with an old program I haven't used in ages. Specifically, Pivot. It's a stickfigure animation program that even a baby could use, which is why it suits me perfectly, oh wait...
I made several animations (saved them as gifs) then compiled them into one movie using Windows Movie Maker. That's the easy part, what's way hard is putting sounds into it. So anyway, here's the result of my aggrevation:

(be sure to comment, like, and subscribe! :D)

What, this is a game making blog and not for stick figure animations? :P Dang!
I've been working on Maximus Cerebrum a bit more as well, the primary reason for procrastination is lack of ideas. It's unclear what kinds of puzzles and powerups I should put into the game next. I'm confident I can finish the project though.

Monday, April 30, 2012

As some of you know, there was a Game Maker Community Jam (6th one). I made a game called Sleepshooter, you can check it out here. It's a platform view puzzler. In it you can put your enemies to sleep and toss them almost anywhere you like.

Saturday, April 7, 2012

I think this might be the first time I've made 2 blog posts in one day. Anyways, the 4 hour dev jam was a success for me! I made a game called Asteroid Panic(click this to download)! It's an arcade game where you can destroy dirt by shooting it with your gun and you must dig down deeper to escape from asteroids up above. I only used 2 & 1/2 hours of the 4 hours alloted. Which just shows I have mad ninja skillz.

Well, I'm still helping out with the GMCG. Things are getting going a bit slowly atm, that will change. Also the RDC (Rapid Development Competition) has been changed, it is now the 4 Hour Game Dev. You just work on stuff for 4 hours and then get feedback, so it's not really competing anymore. But it should be fun. It's being hosted today, in like, 4 and a half hours.

So um.. yep...

Here's a screenshot of the GMCG engine, all sprites are placeholders except the grass tileset:

Sunday, April 1, 2012

I'm afraid I'm losing interest in game development... I find myself more drawn to less computer-reliant hobbies. Therefore I will no longer be working with GM :(
It was fun while it lasted, I made a lot of noteworthy games... yet they did not get as much attention as I believe they merit.
So farewell, my dear comrades, may you forever be in the blissful world of indie games(And keep me in your memories).

Thursday, March 29, 2012

Okay, well first of all I'm helping out with the (very unstable) GMCG, which is starting up again on the GMC courtesy of Varuks. Personally, I'm hoping that there won't be as many people hopping on the bandwagon this time around. Less people = Easier to organize. They seem to be planning on making a quick Shmup game as a warmup to making a real platform adventure. I do not agree with this. I think they should put all their efforts into one project. Not multiple ones.Check out the topic here.

Haha, well the GMCG was a failure on the GMC...

In other news an RDC is being held on April 7, in 8 days! So check this place out for more info.

Charmeleon, a GMC Member has recently popped up and is reviewing games posted on the GMC on his blog. Charmeleon's Awesume Reviews. His honesty and unbiased opinions are refreshing(to me, at least). So by all means, subscribe if you like to find out about good/bad games... or even to learn about bad game design choices in general.

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Does anyone remember when I started that Iji Fangame Sequel thing and it failed utterly? Man, I thought that would be the death of me. There was way too much ambition in the idea. I'm thinking of starting over on a little Iji-fangame project, without getting a bunch of teammates who try to force me to work. Being Indie. Being your own boss. That's the way to go.

Of course, I would not even begin to work on an Iji fangame now. I've got too many projects already. Of course, the only one I really would need to finish before starting work on another game is Maximus Cerebrum. Gotta get that new computer!

Monday, March 12, 2012

I was looking at YellowAfterLife's new blog and found a post with a review of a game, Deharmonized.
The screenshots looked nice, the review was pleasing. So I decided to play the game myself.

It is a very abstract one-button game, about as simplistic as it gets. After playing through the game and finding it a pleasant experience I decided to review it on the YYG page here. I recommend anyone who has 10 minutes to kill to try it out.

Work on Maximus Cerebrum has come to a halt, I have, by no means abandoned it, I'm just not in the mood for working on it right now... my lack of motivation is caused by having such a trashy computer. Every time I run an .exe or play a flash game, my computer fans scream rather loud and annoyingly(sometimes they do that anyway, though). This causes me to have an aversion to working on my games. I'm definitely getting a new computer sometime soon. Maybe sometime after YellowAfterLife finishes porting Rocket Leaper to flash ;) Hopefully we can get a sponsor who will pay us for the game.

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

After making a lousy game for the GMC Jam #5, Water, Water, Water. I resumed working on a project I started at the beginning of this year, Maximus Cerebrum.

The game is centered around a self-working factory(a factory that requires no human intervention). The player is one of the robots generated by the factory to do maintenance and stuff. The lucky robot gets it's hands... well, erm... it has no hands... but it finds a jump powerup when it comes out of a trash chute. So it then is capable of going into restricted areas. Oh, yeah... the robot is led to believe by logbooks around the factory that all humans are extinct.

So I've been working on this game for a little bit more than a month now. I've gotten a composer to make a fitting music track for it, also I have a few GMC Members testing out the game and giving comments & suggestions.

Thursday, January 12, 2012

Maximus Cerebrum is a platform adventure game with puzzle elements, stealth, and primarily b&w graphics.

I've been working on it roughly since the beginning of January. I've got some testers for it, and am slowly progressing with it. I'll give more details in later blog posts. Stay tuned.

I recently discovered something very interesting and amusing :3ThatSnail directed my attention to the Stats page you could view that showed you a lot of neat details about the people who view your site and stuff. Here is an image of the countries that give me the most traffic.

Korea is giving me heaps of traffic, and it seems to be the result of 1 word.

BEEG

It must be some Korean word or something... because ever since I made this blog post the amount of blog views I get has skyrocketed. (on that post)

Another thing to note is that I get more views from people using ANDROIDS than Windows! And I'm guessing that it's because Koreans use Androids as well. xD

You know what this means? You can increase your traffic just by using the word Beeg in your stuff! I just hope they don't get angry when everyone starts exploiting this. :3

Thursday, January 5, 2012

PixelHouseToast is notorious on YYG for his random games with unique concepts and graphical effects. I'm not very interested in most of his new games because they are a bit TOO random for my tastes :P SF DEM is an exception, it shows what PHT is really capable of if he puts time into his work. It's still a WIP, he just released it to see what people thought of it, and I must say, it is a really cool game. PHT describes the game as "horror/puzzle/surreal", which is very accurate. It was rather horrific the first time I saw the... well, I don't want to spoil TOO much of the game for you ;)

There are 2 different endings in the game. When you reach them the game will just say "Game Over". So don't rack your brains out trying to find out how to "win the game", because this is a WIP and right now it only has 2 (very special) endings. I also suggest having your sound on while playing, it seems like quite a bit of effort was put into audio. :)